Dear William

William Flowers is a great guy. Smart. Gracious. Sensitive. He is a cousin of mine who lives in Dothan. Of all my Dothan cousins he is the one I like the most. He is one of the seven children of Paul and Grace Flowers, the second to the last in birth order. His mother Grace was from “Tidewater”, Virginia, married a young doctor named Paul Flowers and moved to southeast Alabama where her husband would found a new hospital, and begin a practice in obstetrics.. She was well-educated, a social activist, a liberal in a sea of, well….. She was a member of the League of Women Voters some fifty years ago in Dothan, Alabama of all places. She had to drive to Montgomery for meetings. She was aptly named Grace… she cared for the down and out… she insisted her husband tend to the less fortunate in his medical practice… she was an ardent supporter of civil rights and thereby endured the scorn of many in our town. Her son William bears her legacy… He is intelligent and articulate. He pays attention to the world around him. He studies. He cares passionately for equality and justice. He is kind and gentle. And though he takes on the sundry liberal causes in a most conservative part of the world, he is respected by his interlocutors. He is a great guy. He is also an atheist. He says there is no God.

I remember the day, not so long ago, that one wouldn’t dare admit to being an atheist; but now, in post modern America, in an age when all of our institutions are called into question, atheism has become mainstream, fashionable even… and for good reason. People are fed up with what purports to be Christianity in our culture. The institutional church in its denominational manifestations has fallen prey to the disease of self-interest. It has for hundreds of years turned inward with self-preservation being its chief rubric. It has carved its untenable dogma into the edifice of certainty, scorning the imaginative questions of the faithful. It has become exclusive and judgmental. It has presumed a moral authority without grace and humility. It has caused harm through emotional and physical abuse; supported illegal wars of the military industrial complex; it has, in the main, propounded a theology that no thinking, honest person would dare espouse. Ironically, I think a healthy atheism is a creative step towards an authentic life of faith. Authenticity… that’s what is lacking in the church.

I have told people that I am an “a-Theist.” That is, I don’t believe in a male deity aloof in the heavens who saves one child in the NICU, and doesn’t the other; or a deity who allows disease and hunger (mostly among the poor); or a deity that topples sailboats capriciously in Mobile Bay. Perhaps the greatest sin of the church has been that it has purported to know the nature of God when in truth its theological premises have always been, at best, speculation. Paul Tillich argues that doubt is an essential dynamic of faith. I would add to that that the human imagination is equally essential; that theology is always evolving in artful speculation. that our liturgical life celebrates mystery, not prescribed catechumena. The church has always had a problem with such talk.

So, William…. Here’s the thing. Humankind and its institution, the church, has imprisoned God in a temple of certainty… a temple inhabited by a God made in its own image… If God is the deranged watchmaker in the sky, I’m so with you… But, if God is the name we ascribe to the beguiling mystery of the universe…. If God is the spirit of love that moves us to care for our neighbor, and the least and the lost…. if God is love for the world whose means is justice and peace… if God is the inspired imagination that improvises the true, the beautiful, and the good into being…If God is infinite possibility amid the ambiguity of life… then I’m down with that… We humans need to name things… We thrive on symbols, outward and visible signs of what we know to be true…. Perhaps the word “God” has outlived its usefulness… but no matter, we need something “other,” but intimately proximate, to whom we express our gratitude and the joy of being alive, and creatively sentient, our inevitable deaths notwithstanding… We need to praise. It’s our nature. Our hearts are made for it…. because ultimately that is all that is left to do, when all things have been done.

Keep the faith William… the church needs the likes of you.

7 Comments

  1. Jim, this is profound for our “today”! Thank you!!

  2. Amen!

  3. It’s comments like this and the good people of All Saints that keep me coming to church.

  4. “We need to praise…It’s our nature…Our hearts are made for it…”
    Wonderful. Such a simple, useful insight into what we are all doing when we walk in the door on Sunday. It makes me feel much more noble than I usually do. Thank you.

  5. I have seen, repeatedly, the Ron Regan commercial on comedy central, in which Ron espouses being an atheist. In the commercial he’s doing battle with the framers of the constitution having the “intent” of keeping church and state separate. Proudly broadcasting one’s atheism seems almost Baptist, and I know your advice advocating a bit of self aware doubt quite welcome from my view of the world. To say, “yes,” rather than to shout “no,” is healthy. William’s going to need all the help he can get one day.

  6. Thank you for the kind words. I’m flattered and I know my mother would be also. The church could use a lot more leaders like you.

  7. I guess I’m somehow related to you as well because my grandmother was Mary Ila Flowers and my great-grand was Mary Ola McDavid, one of the sisters who married two Flowers brothers.

    Anyway, William and I are the same age, give or take some months, and we grew up in the same church. I understand his anger at God and especially the church. I wish to encourage his quest – minus the sometimes repetitive vitriol – but I’ve never been able to put it into words. Thank you.

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